


Spreadsheets, Sculptures, and Other Perfect Things

by buttsonthebeach



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Romance, Sexual content is clearly marked and easily skippable, Some mild spoilers for the game, and for Leah's romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 05:08:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15454005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttsonthebeach/pseuds/buttsonthebeach
Summary: Penelope isn't good with risks and feelings and art. She's good with spreadsheets, numbers, facts, and figures - until she meets Leah.





	Spreadsheets, Sculptures, and Other Perfect Things

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! This originally appeared as a prompt response here on my [Tumblr](https://buttsonthebeach.tumblr.com/post/176339923096/prompt-penelope-leah-licking-your-fingers), which is why I must dedicate this to [cedarmoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarmoons/pseuds/cedarmoons), since she was the one who insisted on it. (Fair warning, my Tumblr is 99.99999% Dragon Age). Thanks for pestering me to write about Leah and Penelope, Theia!
> 
> If you would like to skip the sexual content, stop reading at the ** mark and pick up after the *** mark. This has very, very mild spoilers for Leah's romance, but I don't go in-depth on any heart events except for the one where she brings you a statue.

Penelope liked facts and figures. She made a mean spreadsheet. It was what Joja Corporation hired her for. Her degree in biology was uninteresting to them. Her minute attention to detail and near obsessive need for planners and organization? That they could use. For eight hours a day. In a dimly lit cubicle. She could plan the shit out of their payroll and organize their files for new hires and -

Fuck. Just thinking about it made her feel claustrophobic all over again.

So the whole point of coming to Stardew Valley, to Grandpa’s farm, was to get away from all that.

And now she found herself sitting on the porch of her newly renovated farmhouse, her cat Jin rolling around in a sunbeam on the porch, staring at a spreadsheet of her expected yields and profits from her last fall harvest, and projections of how much she would need to mine over the winter if she wanted to a) eat b) renovate the house again and c) buy more animals to sell more animal products so she wouldn’t have to break her back  _ all _ winter in the mine.

Fuck.

It was then that she heard the heavy drag of footsteps coming up the gravel path she’d laid down - the one that ran between her young cherry saplings, past the small pond, and towards Cindersnap Forest. She looked up from her laptop and shaded her eyes against the early morning sunshine. Someone was coming towards her - red hair - Leah?

Leah, who’d barely spoken a word to her at first, who she only met by chance one Friday in the Stardrop Saloon in late spring because she rarely left her cabin. Leah who tucked her hair behind her ears over and over again when she was nervous and let it fall out of its braid when she waved her hands excitedly, discussing her latest sculpture and how it conveyed the utter isolation of a crowded subway platform in Zuzu City.

Leah who seemed so unflappable until she got on the phone with Kel, her ex-girlfriend.

Leah who was scared to show off her sculptures to anyone but Penelope.

Leah.

_ Fuck. _

Leah made Penelope’s heart speed up the way only one other person had before - Marie, her college sweetheart, the woman who abruptly broke her heart the night before they were supposed to move into their first apartment together. Which led to her taking the job at Joja to afford the place since she couldn’t get out of the lease, instead of getting her masters in microbiology the way she’d planned. Which led to her gaining twenty pounds as she binge-watched  _ Wynonna Earp  _ and sampled every single Ben and Jerry’s flavor they sold at her local (you guessed it) Joja Mart.

Which ultimately led to her sitting on this sunny porch worrying about eggplants and why on earth it was she wasn’t allowed to use a goddamn gun to kill the monsters in the mine (she was shit at the slingshot).

Which ultimately led to Leah, walking up the gravel path, making her heart beat the way she thought it never would again.

Leah had a statue behind her. She was dragging it on some kind of dolley behind her. It was at least as tall as she was, and brown as the corduroy pants she wore no matter the season (brown as her kind eyes). Her face was flushed with effort but she was beaming as she made her way to the house.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” she assured Penelope, waving off her offer of assistance. On the porch, Jin stood and arched her back and meowed plaintively at Leah, as if she hadn’t already been pet and coddled for half an hour that morning while Penelope lay in bed.

“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Leah said when she reached the farmhouse, beaming despite her sweat.

“Sure is,” Penelope replied, her heart speeding up again. Leah kept right on beaming.

“I’ve got a gift for you. It’s a sculpture I’ve been working on just for you. Well, you probably figured that out. Ta-da!” She waved to the sculpture with a flourish. It was mahogany, and nearly as tall as Penelope herself. It looked like it was made of a series of loops rising organically out of the earth.

“It’s called  _ How I Feel About Penelope _ ,” Leah said. There she went with the tucking-the-hair-behind-the-ears.  _ How I feel about Penelope _ . Leah who was so shy she had to speak through wood to make herself heard.

So what was this sculpture saying?

Penelope knew she should have taken that art history elective.

“It’s amazing,” Penelope said. “And I know exactly where it’s going to go.”

“Here, let me help!”

“Oh, it’s fine - the bedroom’s a mess -”

“Nonsense.”

The truth was that the bedroom was fine, but Penelope wasn’t sure she wanted Leah to know that that’s where she wanted the statue to go - right where she would always be able to see it when she woke. But in the end Leah didn’t seem to mind the placement at all. She praised Penelope’s choice, her feng shui, the way it went with the deep green wallpaper she’d just ordered from a catalogue.

“I like it,” Leah said just as she was getting ready to leave. “I like how you bring nature inside.”

_ I like you _ , Penelope thought, but the words wouldn’t come.

Leah left, and Penelope went back into the bedroom and stood looking at the statue - its curving, arching arms, its strength, its flexibility.  _ How I feel about Penelope. _

She went back out on the porch and closed the laptop, pushing the spreadsheet from her mind. She would be flexible. She would walk the farm and smell the soil and not stress over every cent. She would just  _ be _ . Like Leah and her sculpture.

*

It wasn’t the last sculpture Leah would show her. Not by a long shot. They spent the rest of that fall and then a good part of the winter that followed working on sculptures for her art show, which Penelope had finally persuaded her to move forward with. It was a good distraction from the nagging feeling in the back of Penelope’s mind - that no matter how hard she worked, how many times she counted up how much food she had saved up for her livestock and frozen in the fridge for herself, she wasn’t doing enough.

“Winter is when all of nature rests and resets,” Leah told her. “You should rest and reset, too.”

But sitting around her own farmhouse only led to fidgeting and spreadsheets (what was  _ wrong _ with her) and watching too many cooking shows on her TV, or taking too many pictures of Jin lolling about cutely on the floor while secretly counting and recounting how much more lumber she needed to have Robin build another barn and how quickly she could reasonably afford it because if she had another barn she could get more goats and then -

So resting and resetting became going to Leah’s house with some freshly gathered hazelnuts to roast over her fireplace, or maybe some poppyseed muffins - and then, finally, her very first batch of homemade raspberry wine. And then they’d sit there by the fire and Leah would wax poetic about the sculptures she was considering for the show, how they challenged personhood and celebrated her favorite mediums and how she left things intentionally unclear for the viewer to provoke thought. It was exactly the sort of thing Penelope used to overhear in the quad in her college days, and scoff at. How could people spend their whole lives overthinking about art to  _ that _ degree?

But now she was starting to get it. Leah shaved away seemingly random scraps of wood from a large block and beauty and meaning emerged. And Penelope forgot about the exact alkalinity of her soil and whether she should plant three fields of cauliflower next season or do kale instead and get more harvests out of it or if that would deplete the nutrients -

Okay, so it didn’t make her forget  _ completely _ . But Leah’s little cabin was still an oasis, and Leah was still so beautiful and smart and kind, and Penelope was hopelessly in love.

It was the kind of realization that dawned slowly over the course of their daily conversations, not something that hit her like a thunderclap. When Penelope thought back over it later, she thought the exact moment might have been when she came out of the bathroom and saw Leah looking at the window at the drifting snow, a content smile on her face. She loved Leah. She hadn’t even held her hand, and she loved her. She felt safe with her. She understood more of the world through her eyes. She loved her.

So she went to Pierre’s store and bought a bouquet of flowers - the biggest and most beautiful he had in the dead of winter - and she carried them over to Leah’s house. And she stood there on the step, holding them with trembling hands, because nothing had ever been as scary as this. Not coming out to her parents. Not sitting alone in that empty apartment after Marie left. Not quitting Joja and getting on the bus to Pelican Town. Nothing scared her as much as the idea that she, with all her facts and figures and anxieties, wouldn’t be good enough for the woman she loved.

Leah’s eyes lit up like the lights in the town square when she saw Penelope standing there.

“Are these - are these what I think they are?” she asked.

“Well - if you think they’re special flowers that are saying I want you to be my girlfriend then - yes?”

Leah laughed and laughed, and then she kissed her, and it was suddenly the warmest winter Penelope had ever known.

**

Penelope hadn’t doubted she was gay since the sixth grade and her first crush ever (Mimi Marquez from  _ Rent _ ). But damn, did Leah manage to remind her every day.

Leah would be covered in sweat from working hard on a large sculpture and Penelope would look at her and think  _ damn, I’m gay _ .

Leah would show up with ingredients to make dinner one evening, knowing Penelope would be exhausted from working in the mine, and she would hear her gentle laughter in the kitchen while she iced her back in the other room and think  _ damn, I’m gay _ .

Leah would kiss her hard and fast, pressed up against the kitchen counter, and then Penelope would hardly be able to think at all, but if she was, the only real thought that would come would be  _ I am so, so, so gay. _

And also that she was so, so in love.

Leah wanted to take things slow after everything that happened with Kel, which suited Penelope fine. There were plenty of long make-out sessions on one of their couches, and many long walks in the snow, hand in hand. And then there was one night, towards the end of winter, when a late snowstorm kicked up and make it hard to see even a foot past the windows of the farmhouse.

“You know, I try not to make a habit of quoting carols - but it really is cold outside. You could stay,” Penelope offered, tentatively.

Leah beamed with quiet warmth, her nose scrunching, as she hid her face behind her mug of hot chocolate.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

When they got to the bedroom, Leah undressed before Penelope could offer to give her some privacy. She got to watch the arch of her back as she pulled the sweater over her head, see the gentle pudge of her stomach sticking out over the band of her cotton underwear, the freckles on her legs and the red hair that covered them,  _ fuck _ -

“Ooh, this looks cozy. Can I borrow it?” Leah held up a big, ratty pink sweater.

“Uh huh.” Penelope hoped she didn’t look as dazed as she sounded. Leah pulled on the sweater. It brushed the tops of her thighs and swayed against her butt as she walked over to the bathroom, and Penelope felt delicious, wet heat sinking into the space between her legs. She knew what she was thinking about the next time she pulled her beloved vibrator out of the bedside table and teased herself all over before sliding it home so it pulsed against her G-spot and buzzed against her clit at the same time - those  _ legs _ .

Maybe she’d think about those legs brushing against her face as she licked her -

“Hey, honey - do you mind if I use the last of this lotion you’ve got here? It smells amazing.”

“Go ahead,” Penelope said after she cleared her throat. “I, uh, made it myself. With those crocuses I gathered the other day.”

“Mm. Nice.”

She wasn’t staring.

She was  _ not _ staring at Leah as she spread the lotion between her hands, propped a leg up on the bed, and began smoothing it over her freckled skin. She was definitely  _ not _ staring at the way the sweater rode up and gave her a view of that white cotton underwear -

“Uh, I should get ready for bed too I guess,” she said at last.

“Yeah,” Leah laughed, scooping up more lotion. “I’m definitely not sleeping next to you in your dirty mining clothes.”

Oh god, she probably smelled like goat and cow and chicken and sheep and clay and granite dust from the quarry. She hadn’t thought of that.

“Shit, sorry. I should probably shower.”

“I didn’t say that,” Leah said. Her smile as she capped the lotion was more sultry. “I happen to like the way you smell, you know.”

She was staring again.

At the pink bow ofLeah’s lips, at the end of her braid where it swung over her shoulder.

She was aching between her legs at the thought of running her fingers through that hair. Of sliding her fingers in somewhere else.

“Penelope?”

Leah looked both confused and amused. She’d been staring again.

“Shit, fuck, sorry, I - I’m just, like, really, really turned on right now.”

The only way to describe the smile that Leah gave her then was  _ catlike _ . It was sly and full of promise and doing absolutely nothing to make Penelope less turned on.

“Oh good. I was wondering about that. Because I’m pretty turned on right now, too.”

_ Yes _ .

Leah was as slow and gentle as Penelope had imagined. Her kisses were long and sweet. Her skin was soft and warm. She liked it when Penelope sucked her nipples into hard points and when she bit down on the side of her neck - and she liked it best of all when Penelope pulled down her underwear and ran her fingers along her wet, swollen cunt.

“Yes, I want you just like that,” she murmured. No shyness here, not naked and spread out on the quilt under the winter starlight.

“Just like this?” Penelope asked, her voice barely a whisper. This all felt like a mirage that could slip away at any moment. No matter how real and slick and  _ perfect _ the flesh under her fingers was.

“Yeah - now kiss me -”

No one had to tell her twice to kiss Leah.

She kissed her as she slid one finger and then another inside her. She kissed her as she rubbed the pad of her thumb in a slow, wide circle around her clit. She stopped kissing her only to make sure that that was good. (“Yeah, slow like that, slow like that is good.”) She kissed her again until the sweet pressure of Leah’s thigh between her legs was becoming too much, when she had to rock against it over and over and over because it just felt so  _ good _ on her own clit. She kissed her until Leah kept saying  _ more, more, more _ and all her focus had to be on fucking her with her fingers and thumbing her clit now and then, until a beautiful pink flush spread all over Leah’s skin and her eyes screwed shut with ecstasy and she came, cunt squeezing tight around Penelope’s fingers, and the sight was so beautiful that it had Penelope rubbing frantically against Leah’s thigh - and then Leah recovered enough to slide her own fingers in-between them, and it was just enough pressure, just enough friction, and Penelope felt her own clit swell and twitch and then throb with pleasure as she came, too.

Then there was time to kiss again.

Time to lick the taste of Leah from her fingers.

“You’re kind of perfect, you know,” Leah said, lying there warm and pink and satisfied beneath her. Penelope felt herself glow from the inside out. She was perfect to the woman she loved - anxieties, insecurities, spreadsheets and all

***

The day they got married was kind of perfect, too. It was nearly a year to the day since they first met in the Stardrop Saloon - a late spring day filled with drifting blossoms and the smell of fresh earth. The Community Center wasn’t rebuilt, not completely, and the cherry saplings weren’t coming in as fast as Penelope would have liked, and yields on the kale had been low so far, and one of the goats might be sick and she was behind on collecting lumber for the new coop -

But it was perfect.

It was perfect because Leah was her wife.

Because after the heartache of Marie and the soul-sucking boredom of Joja and the terrifying risk of coming to Stardew Valley - it was all worth it.

Waking the morning after to their little farmhouse and Jin meowing for more food and Leah already in the kitchen, making coffee, humming a song - it was all worth it. The kind of thing you couldn’t plan for in a spreadsheet. The kind of thing she hadn’t dared to hope for in a long time.

Penelope rose, ready to tackle the day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
